MANCHESTER, N.H. -- With terrorism fears rising and the U.S. getting deeper into yet another conflict in Iraq, Bernie Sanders picked at an old political wound for Hillary Clinton in a Democratic presidential debate Saturday night.
“I voted against the War in Iraq because I thought unilateral military action would not produce the results that were necessary and would lead to the kind of unraveling and instability that we saw in the Middle East,” Sanders said, referencing the 2002 vote.
Clinton voted for the war authorization, and Barack Obama harped on the issue in 2008 to help defeat her in a presidential primary.
Running again in 2016, Clinton faces an upstart in Sanders who staked out less-interventionist ground in repeated clashes Saturday, while Clinton played the experience card from her time as secretary of state.
“I know how hard it is to build coalitions,” Clinton said.
Though Sanders, the Vermont senator, has based his challenge to Clinton mostly on pocketbook issues, taking on banks and billionaires, he has had to pivot in the wake of terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif. So his attack in the third Democratic presidential debate on the campus of Saint Anselm College in Manchester indirectly pinned the blame for the rise of the Islamic State on Clinton's policies.
He declared Clinton too enamored with "regime change," and said the U.S. should work with Russia to take out the Islamic State and not worry about removing Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, at least for now.
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